Cattlemen's College Luncheon – Gene Stallings, Keynote speaker
Stallings Addresses Cattlemen’s Luncheon
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Fellow rancher and former coach Gene Stallings capitalized on similarities between football and ranching to motivate attendees of the Cattlemen’s College Luncheon Wednesday, Jan. 29. The luncheon was held in conjunction with the 2003 Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show in Nashville, Tenn.
How do you survive when everything is being cut back except expectations? Stallings said he addressed that same problem at a coaches association meeting in the very same Gaylord Opryland Hotel a few years ago. Scholarships were being cut back, the number of coaches on staff was being cut back, the very time coaches were allowed to spend with players was being cut back, Stallings explained. The only thing not being cut back was expectations.
Cattlemen today find themselves in much the same boat. The solution, he said, is to improve yourself professionally – to learn how to do more with what you have. That’s why ranchers attend meetings like the Cattlemen’s College and the Cattle Industry Convention.
"Don’t confuse activities with accomplishments," Stallings said, encouraging participants to put what they learn into action.
"Somewhere along the line, somebody in the cattle business is making money," he said. Those who aren’t need to be listening to those who are and taking that information back home to make their operations better.
Stallings recalled coaching on the Dallas Cowboy staff a year when they had 13 rookies. At the outset of the season, the coaches set as the team goal for each player, by the end of the season, to develop a genuine appreciation for the contribution everyone else made to the team. "The last game we lost that year was the Super Bowl," Stallings said. "There’s something to appreciation."
Stallings played on Paul "Bear" Bryant’s 1956 Southwest Conference Championship Team. He was a student assistant before following Bryant to the University of Alabama as an assistant coach. Six years later, Stallings became Texas A&M’s head football coach. After helping the Dallas Cowboys to a world championship during a 13-year stint as a secondary coach, Stallings was named head coach of the National Football League’s Phoenix Cardinals. Three year’s later, he returned to college football as head coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide, and three years later he won the national championship. Stallings retired from coaching in 1996.
-- by Shauna Rose Hermel